How Long Should Companies Make E-Bills Available? 299
theodp writes "If you say goodbye to paper and hello to green, you may learn first-hand that no good deed goes unpunished. Try to pay your final Verizon Wireless bill online after switching carriers, for example, and don't be surprised if you get a sorry-Dave-I'm-afraid-I-can't-do-that reply. Other vendors may curtail e-Bill services 30 days after you end service. And a promise of access to up to seven years of paperless statements is somewhat empty if you'll be cutoff as soon as you no longer have an account. With more-and-more companies enticing consumers to go paperless, how long a period of time should the records be made available online? Should it extend beyond the life of an account?"
statute of limitations (Score:5, Interesting)
They should provide access as long as one might reasonably need it which is at least as long as the statute of limitations give one to take legal action.
Depends on Their Importance (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Entitlement ... what is with it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not being allowed to see the closing statement for your account is quite a big deal if you are unsure of the balance they want paying.
As ISP I once used had a £40 account closure fee. I couldn't find it written down in any of the paper sign up documents, although it was in online terms and conditions (which the sign up contract said could be changed at any time). I suspected it was illegal to really do that, in the UK at least, so I just put a bar on the payments and paid off everything except the £40.
With paper bills, they are sent to you to keep as long as you like. The e-bills direct equivalent would be sending you an email with the PDF attached. The physical equivalent of Verizon's policy is allowing you to visit their local office to see your statement, and pick up your own copy if you like. But when you close the account they lock the door - if you hadn't been in to collect your last bill, tough luck.
What's the value in deleting records? (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks to Moore's law, there is very little value in deleting records except in very extreme cases, or when the data itself acts as an un-necessary liability.
If you assume that you have enough storage for the current year on hand, are you going to more-than double the amount of storage you need over the next 18 months? Very few business will say "yes" to this, and thus the cost of storing everything is DROPPING with each passing year, despite the ever rising amount of it.
We recently upgraded one of our D2D backup arrays from 300 GB drives to 1.5 TB SATA drives. For less than the cost of the original array of 300 GB drives, we ended up with 5 times the storage space in just over 2 years, meaning that the cost of the old data is now 1/5 what it used to be. We were profitable keeping that data 2 years ago, so in a sense, we are 5x as profitable keeping that same information today!
So why would we delete it?
Re:Alternative to online account access/storage (Score:5, Interesting)
My previous mobile contract had paperless billing, and you could either view the bill as HTML, or click the "Download" button which gave you a PDF to save. This was over SSL, of course. You could email it to yourself if you really wanted to.
I don't know if/when they'll close the account, but it's now been open for about a month after the contract ended.
If I asked for a duplicate paper copy of a bill in two years time, it would be reasonable for the company to charge me. So, I don't see why they should have to keep the bill-viewing service running indefinitely either.
Re:Entitlement ... what is with it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not being allowed to see the closing statement for your account is quite a big deal if you are unsure of the balance they want paying.
I am still going through this with my phone company. They didn't send me the final bill then dropped the account with debt collectors. When I called up to request a bill they added a $5 charge and posted it to the wrong address, after putting me on hold for about an hour. A full day of my time later I finally got a correct payout figure from them; and it was worth a lot less than the lost income.
Suffice to say, it's going to court this year to recover my lost income for spending a full day chasing the issue and not being able to work, for having to avoid getting listed on the bad credit register.
Re:more paper == more trees (Score:3, Interesting)
Trees that are used for paper grow VERY fast
Just out of curiosity, what species of tree are they growing?
Re:more paper == more trees (Score:3, Interesting)
Utilities push online billing because it saves them money; the fact that it also saves energy in the process and is more convenient for consumers is a win/win/win.
I moved to Germany recently. My utility has a great idea but might not work elsewhere. They estimate my utility usage based on last years usage. They bill me a monthly amount. At the end of the year if I used more they bill me for it, if I used less they refund it. I receive one "bill" a year. It really isn't a bill as it is automatically deposited/charged to my bank account.
I realize a lot of people aren't as trusting as is required in Germany (all my bills are automatically withdrawn, ie. the companies have my banking info, not me having a autopay thing on my bank account), but man are things simple in a world were people trust each other. I get paid automatically, I get charged automatically. Fortunately I make much more than I spend, so when I want to do something I just take out a wad of cash and don't worry about it. No worries of forgetting to pay something.
Re:if the tax agency comes knocking... (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought this eBill thing was a neat idea when it first came out years ago for one of my monthly services. So I signed up for it. There was an error in my billing a few months later, and I called and had it corrected. Instead of showing up as a correction on my following billing statement, they had changed the original incorrect bill. Looking at my online account, everything seemed as if it had never had an error.
I canceled eBill immediately and refuse it from all other vendors now. I want this information for my own records, and I don't want them being the one who controls it and gets to rewrite history in case there was a problem.
I'd consider it if they could email me a PDF of the same document that comes as a paper bill. They can put all those other bells and whistles on too if they want, but I want a copy in my possession that they don't have access to change, without having to remember to save it out by hand every month, and in a format that gives me the legal leverage I need to be able to prove the document came from them (eg, email headers on the email with the attachment on a 3rd party mail server such as GMail).
EBilling is a way for your service provider to control history, and to deny you access to information which might condemn them should they screw up in some serious way. I need better control over this than ebilling provides.
Re:if the tax agency comes knocking... (Score:4, Interesting)
As for going paperless, I've not done it because I'd probably forget to pay the bill!
Heh, it's exactly the opposite for me. When I have a paper bill, I remember that I need to pay the bill, but never to actually do it. I'm always remembering "Oh yeah, I need to send that check out!" while I'm at work. I've even had an envelope with a check in it sit on my counter for weeks... all ready to go, I just needed to remember to take it to a mailbox.
With e-bill, I can accommodate my stupid brain, and pay it when I remember to do it, instantly. ;)
Happens sometimes for final billing (Score:3, Interesting)
Calling them to ask to send a bill on paper was useless - once they hear you aren't a customer and aren't interested in signing up again you're put into the "On Hold Forever" queue.
Got an email a month later saying I hadn't paid, but of course every email says "Do not reply to this email - if you have questions, log into your account", which didn't exist.
I finally sent them a check for what my standard monthly bill is, knowing it was too much. Since then, for three years, they've been sending me a monthly statement, by snail mail, telling me they owe me about eight dollars. Every month, for three years. Just send me a check!
Re:Another blow against libertarianism here on /. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's called a contract people. Are finally at the point where there is just no such thing as freedom of contract, and therefor contracts no longer mean anything?
Based on some recent dealings with with large companies, I'm becoming convinced that no, contracts don't mean anything any more.
Things like claiming someone owes them more money even after they've fulfilled the letter of the contract, then when it gets to court, backpedalling and saying they made a mistake, but it's too late now because they've already sold the debt to a debt collector. At that point, under the law here, *someone* has to pay the debt collector, and guess who has a pair of big guys come around and start accidentally breaking the stuff in your lounge room until you sign a repayment plan? I'll give you a clue, it's not the mobile phone company! Of course, you *could* sue the phone company to recover the money, except that they deleted your records when you were no longer a customer, so they stand up in court and say they've never heard of you and have no idea why they owe you anything.
It's not the only case I know of where the large company decides that it's too hard to abide by the contract they wrote themselves. I can see it having a corrosive effect on society around me. If you know the other side won't abide by a contract, and will make you fight like hell to even get close to it, why stick to it yourself? And if you can only break even by breaking contracts with the big players, why not get ahead by breaking your contracts with everyone else? After all, "everyone" does it now.
Re:statute of limitations (Score:3, Interesting)
As your signature shows, you are aware there are other countries then just the USofA.
One might also note that each of the 50 United States has its own separate statute of limitations.
Re:My bank holds (for free) information for 18 mon (Score:3, Interesting)
That is exactly the kind of service I am looking for. My old bank was recently taken over, and neither of their websites allowed me to view anything more than the past month of transactions. In addition to that disservice, the new bank got rid of the surprisingly wonderful e-banking site used by the old bank, replacing its user-friendly, intuitive interface with a shitty homegrown classic ASP checkbox-n-submit-ridden mess that doesn't support half the functionality of the old one. Not only that, but my account was inaccessible for about a week, wreaking havoc with my scheduled payments--I'm still sorting out the mess, and my credit card company is now charging me the default rate because of it. I was in the middle of composing a nastygram to my current bank when I stumbled upon this comment giving me hope that there are good banks out there.
Can anybody point me to a bank or credit union with excellent online services that has operations in southeastern PA? I'm in the market for one.